That day at Harrenhal
by ladymond
Summary: Set in the future after Arya returns to Westeros and reconnects with Gendry. One night in a forgotten inn Gendry asks Arya a pivotal question. This story was inspired by the scene in both book and tv show of their arrival at Harrenhal and torture. Story published both in the Book and TV categories.


I originally posted this in Tumblr and I just finally got around to post it here after a bit of proofing and editing. You know the drill, nothing belongs to me but this little setting I thought about.

I was inspired about "the" scene at Harrenhal and you may identify a common naturalistic leitmotiv inspired by Zola's "L'assommoir". Gendry, I guess, is channeling _Gervaise_ in his ultimate desire.

Let me know what you think.

* * *

"Do you remember that day at Harrenhal?"

The question had come unprompted in those lost hours before dawn, in the anonymous room of the modest inn where they stopped for a night.

Arya had lain on the bleak mattress unable to sleep, finding herself without a clear path to her past or her future. She had erroneously thought Gendry asleep for it had been hours since he had loved her. They never talked after the fact, and she never had that placid rest that he always seemed to reach. Arya often thought way into the night reciting names or she forced herself awake to avoid the deep red behind her lids.

"Do you remember that day at Harrenhal?" he had asked with a clear voice and still enveloping her lithe body in his, an arm twisted with hers and held close to her heart.

'How could I forget,' she thought. The words bothered her with the taste of her failure at being no one.

How many years had she tried?

Her mind could be bleached of images, but the sounds, no one cared about the sounds. The sudden nausea that the sound of a flock of pigeons taking flight could cause her.

The shriek of rats.

And the smells; the hated stench of burnt fur.

'That day at Harrenhal'

They had stayed at the ruined castle an eternity and a day, and yet no clarification was needed for which one he was referring to.

She couldn't tell him that.

It was forbidden by the unwritten rules of their pasts. He couldn't ask and she wouldn't tell. The game they played dictated that information had to come out obliquely, unplanned: A talk about Needle had unveiled its hidden place under the steps of a temple.

Maybe if a hundred seasons passed and he was attentive enough he'd get the full story of her years apart.

But maybe not.

"No one will ever forget Harrenhal. No one who lived. Don't ask stupid questions," she replied sitting up abruptly at the edge of the bed.

Gendry hadn't taken offence at her abrupt movement. His hand, which had been on her chest had slipped down until it was left stretched out barely touching her hip.

He knew his Northern girl too well to take offence in her sudden changes. This woman of his, of peace and violence.

No, he didn't take offence, but he also didn't admit defeat.

He rose from bed and surrounded her body: his strong legs on either side of her and his head resting on her shoulder. Soon his left arm, so very carefully, wrapped itself around her torso, slowly nudging her long back against his chest while the right found its way, in between her arm and her side, to travel north until the tips of his blackened fingers reached the soft skin of her neck.

He said: "I want to tell you what I wanted that day in Harrenhal."

The words incited her bellicose blood; he felt it charging under his touch.

"What you wanted was to live," she seethed. "That's what we all wanted."

"I'm trying to tell you something and you don't listen," he continued, failing to appease her.

"Who cares what you wanted?" She barked back jerking her head to look at him and forcing his head to rise. "I wanted my father to live. I wanted my mother to hold me and my brothers to rescue me. I wanted Sansa and her stupid needlepoint. I wanted to kill. I wanted blood."

"_You_ wanted." he stated calmly. "_You_ wanted a lot of things, didn't you? All the things they took away from you? What do you think people that have nothing want Arya? What do you think that stupid bull-headed boy wanted that day looking at you while we waited for our turn to scream?

"Do you know what poor people want Arya? Not crowns and thrones, not gowns. Not a big fat roasted boar. We fantasize about that yes. But when you are poor, the one thing you want, the one thing that will prove you lucky is to die in your own bed, peacefully and if you're really fortunate, of old age. I wanted that, and with a wife who didn't hate me holding my hand. That was what I was thinking about that day at Harrenhal when they chose me. When all I did was look into your eyes."

Arya didn't have a clever thing to say but she stood her ground until Gendry closed his eyes and rested his forehead on her wild hair.

They stayed like that for a long time until he found his words again.

"If I was a lord," he said, tasting the words carefully, "you'd be my wife."

She thought of explaining to him that it wasn't as simple as that. Noble blood had nothing to do with choosing in that erratic world of hers. She thought of telling him that oft times than not, loving a Stark warranted a bloodshed.

She thought of telling him about the futility of standing in a godswood, of reciting empty words in front of a maester or a king. She thought about telling him she didn't care.

But she was clever enough to know that there wasn't a question in the air.

The hand holding her tight had loosened and was now idly tracing circles in her lower abdomen.

"I'd belong to you and a part of me would grow in here," the last words almost too quiet to hear.

"But I'm no lord and we have this." He paused for a moment and then said: "There ought to be another word."

Arya smiled at the out presented to her. A respite for the things she still couldn't say. The things she didn't even let herself think.

"There are plenty of words, just because you don't know them it doesn't mean they don't exist."

"Go on. Call me stupid." He taunted her.

"I'm only stating the obvious."

"And what is that?" He inquired.

"That first light will come soon and you are wasting the coins we spent for a good rest thinking of obscure words like you were some stupid bard."

"Because you have been sleeping so placidly?"

This game of theirs was getting old.

"Just go to sleep."

"Because the stupid bastard can't explain a complex thought? I should leave it to the castle lady then."

"I'm not a lady."

"No. You're a disgraced princess," he finally bit back and an inner voice berated him when he felt her mellow.

"What word are you looking for, you silly bull?" she asked in jest letting herself lie back on him.

"For someone educated by a maester and a septa, you never react properly to words you know?" he asked back with an oblique smile, "insults make you soft like ballads do to normal girls."

"I don't see you kicking me out to get a normal girl here to warm your bed," she responded playfully.

"I never said I wanted normal." He retorted with a shrug, kissing the top of her head.

Gendry let a long sigh and he looked back at the dirty wall of the room.

"You'll never be my wife."

She thought of interrupting him.

She thought of letting him know that outside the world had changed: rules just didn't apply in times of war.

Yet she didn't.

It was also true that when the sky was falling down stupid people held tighter to tyrannical rules, to any façade of stability, to any joke of order over chaos.

After all, hadn't she carefully forged her way out of the system by giving him her maidenhead? Despite the desires of her body and soul, she knew that she had made the choice with her head. It had been a deliberate trick on him: let him think that she didn't have anything to lose anymore.

She hadn't lied.

A sin of omission.

She had simply followed the rules they had silently set about their separate pasts; when she grew into a woman and he became a man.

No she didn't lie, but she hadn't stopped him from thinking that the worst had happened in their time apart. She had been cruel, fully knowing he blamed himself for abandoning her.

Gendry had looked so confused when he finally figured it all out, so remorseful. "Do you regret it?" He had asked, and she had laughed.

But later her face had turned serious and before he could start blaming himself again she had gotten closer to him and told him, as if she was delivering a final threat: "I didn't give it to you stupid. I just got rid it of it. Now no one is going to trade me for their own benefit and allow some craven lord to get my land. Winterfell is mine, I'm not losing it for a stupid little piece of useless skin."

It had been for his own good she thought, trying to assuage her guilt. He would have tormented himself and made them waste their time, all for prejudice. After all, they were always heading for the same place. Running towards this moment where they were. Something pushing them to collide into each other, even when she was just kid and him not yet a man.

She had only saved them precious time, when in their bloodied lives, time was never something to spare.

"There has to be another word," he started again. "That day in Harrenhal, looking at you, you weren't my wife, but you held my gaze. If I had been more of a man I would have made you look away."

Arya sadly thought of that foreign imperative that men all seemed to share. It was that talk of being more of a man, of acting like a man; of honor and pride that half her life had made her laugh and the other had given her a bitter taste. She had not needed to be spared the image of her father's death, not when she knew her older brothers had urged Bran not to look away when their father had to dispense justice.

She always hated the implication that she was weak because of her sex.

But she knew.

That day she had known that she wouldn't look away, not because she was Arry, not because her father would have been proud or because she could have toughened herself up as much as any other boy if she had been given the chance. She had held his gaze, despite the horror, because she couldn't let him die alone.

"That day I knew there ought to be another word. I was not old and lying in my bed but you were not going to look away, were you? That day I wanted another word for you."

He had finally said what he had tried in such a roundabout way, and Arya had listened.

It would still be a while until she finally spoke, but then, at dawn, she said the word.

"Mate."

"What?" he asked.

"The word you were looking for, mate, it's what it means, for wolves at least."

"Mate," he said testing the word in his voice.

"Mate," she mumbled finally letting her eyes and her mind close.

It was a very long time before Gendry needed another word.


End file.
